Marluxia's Death
by NotAnotherKHfan
Summary: After living on 10 years of borrowed time, Marluxia is finally drawing his last breaths inside Castle Oblivion. The castle is dying with him-and in it's death throes, it surrenders all of the memories of Marluxia's past life to the fallen lord, reliving the beginning of his existence.
1. Chapter 1

Ten years was all it took to turn Castle Oblivion into a grey, sickly skeleton. Ten years defeated it's legacy as a home and as Hell, and ten years had spread over the walls as rot, cracking the bones of the once proud King. Only the rats bit and clawed over the marble steps now, their mindlessness protecting them from the poison of forgetting that lingered still.

Rats, and a single Nobody.

It was cold in the grey marble cells of Oblivion. A rotting leather coat didn't provide warmth any more than the layers of dust that blanketed every floor, and it was rubbed through with use and disintegrating under the arms of the man that wore it. It cracked and flaked when he moved, crumbling into gritty black dirt as skeletal fingers flexed and a protruding spine bent double. The hood had been torn off years ago, boiled and chewed and finally eaten in a bout of desperate hunger-the pocket linings hadn't survived cooking. He regretted tearing them out once they were gone-it made scavaging harder, though now there wasn't enough to fit in one hand most days, of course, unless he got lucky and managed to catch a rat.

He sat in the corner of the topmost room of the ruined castle, twisted into a suffocated foetus, arms wrapped around his knees and hugging them to his chest. It was the end days: even without the loss of his memories he knew how long he'd been lost in this building, knew how little time he had left. It was a bitter irony that the same mechanism he'd relied on in the past was what would be the death of him now as he forgot how to get the Hell out, and forgot- on each and every floor- why he was moving at all, before he retreated back to his corner.

He'd forgotten too how to nourish himself: another cruel twist of fate when he alone was the only Organization member who might have been able to feed himself (gorge himself, if he dared fantasize) with his powers, but it was all he could do now to reach over and suck water from a crack in the wall. With the end coming, he took relief in knowing that he'd never have to eat another rat.

Marluxia had once been the Lord of the tomb he haunted, before his own arrogance had destroyed him like it so often does to villains in stories. And he was a villain of that there was no question: he'd taken children hostage, tried to destroy the Organization he'd been invited into, all for his own forgotten purposes, and he'd failed. He should have been dead long ago, but he supposed death wasn't enough of a punishment for the likes of him.

Soon he'd see if there was a Hell waiting for him once his breath ran out. Twenty minutes, maybe. It was hard to tell precisely: time seemed to forget here too, leaving Marluxia alone for ten long years after his was supposed to have run out.

He never doubted that Hell existed, a remnant of the time before he lost his heart: he'd been raised in the desert as the prodigy of religious extremists and God had been tattooed into him with whip and rod, engraved into his every thought and action. He knew that his body as it was now, while lacking a heart, still had a soul: the reports from their organization's leader confirmed as much. Would God hold him accountable for his actions without a moral compass to guide him?

Once, long ago, he'd lived only to please his God. A child of the troubled desert believed in God because only God could offer hope when the earth exploded around him. You hoped you weren't about to meet Him when death rained down from the sky, and you thanked Him when he spared your life. When He decided to raze your home to the ground, you just hoped you wouldn't be salting the earth with your blood. The closer to the ground you were, the safer. The further from Heaven, the better.

Unfortunately that was not a lesson that Marluxia had learned growing up. He had been a gifted child and too spoiled to hide it in an arid wasteland greenery where was practically myth, an imported miracle tinned and soggy with salt and oil, seasoned with the slightly bitter tang of aluminium that would be salvaged for pennies by the beggars and children worth less than the garbage they collected. Not so for the child with green thumbs, who could grow rice in centuries-dry sand. At the foot of dangerous hills he bought the wrath of God down on him by playing Cain and daring to grow food that had no business thriving in a desert.

Retribution rained down without mercy. God demanded a blood sacrifice and the mountains had provided it in a hail of bullets and fire that tore apart the frail bodies of mothers trying to save their babies. All men fell in the onslaught, all but the wild-haired boy who hid inside his green haven. He screamed in fear as he was dragged out by his hair and screamed in agony as he was hauled through blood-soaked sand, dead hands reaching out through the raging dirt to scrape at his legs, kicked aside by the uncaring militia that forced their trophy into the mountains of Hell.

Marluxia shifted slightly, flakes of rotten leather sprinkling the filthy marble floor. His chest was tight, the fluid in his lungs rattling like dice in a cup as he fought for breath he didn't deserve. The memories of his past were flooding into him now like a river bursting it's dam, bombarding him with a new kind of agony that made his head spin and the hollow behind his ribs feel heavy and full. He didn't want them. He didn't want to die in so much pain, with phantoms of fear plucking at him with ghostly fingers. 'Marluxia' hadn't even been his name then, they weren't his memories anymore. The accursed castle was dying with him and it's death gurgle was this release of ghosts from it's grip.

The hunted boy's name was Alrumia. "God's Radiant Light" it meant, a well-intentioned rape of Latin and Greek to those who cared, though they were few and far between.

No one spoke to Alrumia once he was buried in the mountain caves. He was dirty and impure, a heretic with a use and he would soon learn how a filthy tool was beaten clean. Locked behind cold bars in a black room, he cried until he had no tears left and his head screamed in pain for him to stop. Tears didn't help. No one consoled him or offered him a single word: he was invisible and powerless, a parasite in the bowels of Hell. No food came and for three days he sat in crushing silence, sipping slowly at the lone cup of water provided and collecting his piss in a leaking bucket, just in case he needed it, before tipping it out on the third night. No one was coming. He was going to die.

The realization was a relief and a comfort. Death was better than the overwhelming darkness of the pit where the tortured ghosts of his family lingered in the corners, waiting for Alrumia to forget them before snapping him out of his sleep to the sound of imagined gunfire. The last of his water was gone and the inky black supported no life: on the fifth day he lay down to surrender, longing to sink into the same earth he'd so often buried his hands in. His fingers fanned like roots over the cold, rough sand, willing it to welcome him home.

The thunderous clap of a food tray being shoved though a slot in the door was so loud it almost deafened him, forcing out a piteous cry of pain, his hands clapping over his ears in a prayer for mercy-the silence that followed was so thick Alrumia thought he might have lost his hearing completely. Not yet understanding what had caused the punishing crash he opened his mouth and gave a tiny croak, faint with relief that he could hear himself even though his voice was so broken from crying he had barely made a noise at all. His heart was in his throat and pounding viciously, adrenaline making him shake, senses on fire as he edged towards the door, feeling along the ground in hopes of a knife or a gun. Instead he found his worst nightmare: life extended.

A grown man wouldn't have been able to stop himself after five days without food. Alrumia was a boy of eight and had never known true hunger-he was powerless to resist with every part of his body screaming for sustenance head spinning giddily. With animal moans of ecstasy he stuffed food into his mouth hand over fist as though someone would take it off of him, all ability to think destroyed by the gift of stale flatbread and a cold, greasy stew. Nimble fingers and efficient tongue scraped the bowl to pristine cleanliness, not a crumb or drip wasted, and only when his stomach ached with excess did he slump back and burst into fresh tears. The escape death had promised him was as false as his resolve.


	2. Chapter 2

Alrumia lived through the same cycle of starvation and salvation for eight long months. In the time he spent in the black cell, he forgot what sunlight felt like: his world shrunk down to a three metre square pit. Every three days food and a skin of water would be forced through a slot in the steel door. Alrumia had learned quickly to save every scrap: the tiny opening often punctured the soft fibre of the waterbag and if he didn't add it to his stew fast it would be lost, leaving him only the already watery soup to keep him from dying of thirst. It was a living Hell of hunger and claustrophobia, where the black walls were as hungry as he was and stalked him mercilessly, creeping ever closer.

He tried to appeal his sentence, of course: for hours on end he held open the food flap and bleated for mercy through it, to no avail. Food was withheld until he surrendered and once when he refused to back down scalding water was poured through the slot and over his face, covering him in blisters. He popped them and drank the foul fluid, then cried with pain as fever wracked his breaking body. The boy lost track of time: slowly he gave up on the hope of ever being free, doomed to live forever in the stony pit.

Eight months was a lifetime.

When the door to his tomb swung open, Alrumia shrieked in agony. The light blinded him and burned his bleached white skin, his claw-like hands grabbing at his face, protecting his eyes from the red glow of fire. He was covered in lesions and disease, caked with filth and so frail his ribs jutted out like the branches of a dead tree. Hissing and snarling like an animal he clawed at the ground, fighting against the thick, strong hands that hauled him out of his pit and into the light. Calloused fingers pried his teeth apart, forcing a lump of sticky brown tar into his mouth, and Alrumia sank into oblivion with a moan.

He awoke to strong, gentle, dark hands massaging the wasted muscles in his legs: the skilled, brisk touches made his skin burn uncomfortably, prickling as the tension was slowly released. It was too bright even with just one lamp in the room, and Alrumia's body was twisted and curled, lying on it's side after months without room to stretch out, his joints frozen into unnatural contortions from lacking the room to lay down flat. He opened his mouth to speak, and a small groan escaped him, distant and alien-sounding. Was it him, that sounded so weak and small? In a dreamy haze he watched nut-brown hands work over his bleached white skin with practised ease, pushing blood into locked joints, flexing them until they were swollen and hot, ignoring Alrumia's soft complaints.

The man frowned as Alrumia's knees turned inwards, refusing his talent stubbornly. He left the boy and returned with two narrow metal cages, padded and armed with nuts to tighten them. The boy would have been scared if he knew the pain that would be coming, or if he could think at all: the nugget of hashish that had been mashed into his teeth was still keeping him sedate, and he watched in mild fastination as two pale, stick-thin legs were slid into the traps. They couldn't have been his legs, they were too white-but the sudden clarity of pain still slapped him in the face when the nuts tightened and forced his bones back to where they belonged.

Eight months in a lightless cell, sustained only on goat meat and salt: he was lucky that rickets and a vitamin deficiency was as bad as it got. His spine had been spared the softening of bones that lead to an unnatural curve, his bent back only stiff with lack of movement. Many children- most, in fact- died in the pit, too young or too stupid or just too weak to understand rationing and movement. If Alrumia had known that he was sleeping in waste of dead boys his own age, he would have been too afraid to think rationally as well.

A needle pricked his skin and plunged deep into his thigh, pushing into muscle and blowing it's load of vitamins inside of him. It didn't hurt yet, though it would ache for days once he could feel it: a second syringe of antibiotics found a vein and twisted into him, burning out the infections in his lungs and skin. The massage continued, reaching between his thighs and into the difficult groin muscles, painting Alrumia with a flush of shame despite assurances that it was strictly professional. His penis grew hard as blood was released to flow again, and he felt tears on the side of his face, though no attention was paid to the infantile arousal. He was turned onto his stomach and his heart skipped a beat in fear: he was naive but not stupid and suspected- but nothing happened but for gentle pressure on his spine as it was shifted and adjusted, painfully aligned and weighed down with warm, heavy stones.

His arms and legs forced straight, back held firmly in place and invasive massage finished, he was covered in a blanket and left to wait, warmed by the stones on his back and a small gas heater in the corner. Before he left, the physician pulled open a curtain on the far wall, allowing a scrap of sunlight into the room: the first Alrumia had seen since being stolen.

It was so beautiful that fresh tears fell, staining the clean white linen he was resting on.


	3. Chapter 3

Pain. Pain was the master of those mountains, a lord even Marluxia was in awe of. He never forgot the first time he had been whipped- there was no mercy between blows, not even for a child, and he'd passed out in agony only to be woken by a vicious cut down his leg that left him limping for months. The crime he had committed to earn such a vicious beating was hoarding food: he'd smuggled a husk of bread in the folds of his clothes to stave off starvation that could never be predicted. He still had the braces on his legs.

Marluxia shuddered, tugging the hem of his black coat up over his leg. The scar was still there, one of the only reminders of his life before. That, and his tattooed green fingers.

He'd been stolen for a reason, he found out. Stories of his prowess in the soil had reached the leader of the clan he'd been abducted by, and he was turned into the rough gravel outside of the cooking area under the supervision of an armed guard, left with a single word: Grow.

And grow he did. Even in the dead land that had never known a fertile touch, Alrumia's hands coaxed stubborn seeds into bloom. They thanked him with solitude and safety and slender green tendrils of hope that twisted around his fingers like loving pets. In the garden he forgot to crave escape, as green and white and vivid orange grew together in the small plot, a feast of colour and flavour that raised Alrumia from slave to soldier. Greed drove his ascension, too: their leader, an unnamed and unknown entity for all of Alrumia's life, wanted more.

He was seized from his small garden one morning as he ushered a beanstalk from the ground, crying out as he was bundled under the arm of the burly, smelly cook. Although he immediately fell silent, well aware of the beating he'd get for screaming, he shook, gaping around with wide eyes, memorizing their path. He didn't ask any questions: he was scared of the answers, despite the cook's relatively gentle grip. Through the winding caves they marched, stopping at a set of steel double doors, one held open with a pile of rusted armour as a doorstop. Inside, the air was thick with the scent of hashish and incense, the savoury, heady scent rushing to Alrumia's brain and leaving him reeling.

The cook set him down outside the door, urging him inside alone, closing the door behind him. The small boy was dwarfed by the size of the cavernous room that was lined with mats and cushions and heavy religious books, hugging himself in nervousness. At the far end of the hall waited a huddle of three men in clean white robes, each with a pipe of hashish and, much more alarmingly, spiked metal tools. One of them barked an order for Alrumia to approach: he did, his feet feeling as though they were weighed in concrete blocks.

The West, one of the men said, seated comfortably and speaking between thick clouds of intoxicating smoke, believed green fingers would grow great harvests. The two other men moved silently to Alrumia's sides, taking the trembling boy's arms and gently leading him to the floor. It hurt to sit with braces on his legs, so they lay him down on his stomach and covered him with a linen sheet, before handing him a pipe.

Alrumia sucked greedily on it. Hashish was a painkiller here, as well as a sacred drug: if he was being offered it, something religious or painful was about to happen, probably both. He wasn't disappointed-as soon as he started growing dizzy and light-headed the pain began, a slim row of needles dipped in green ink hammered into his skin, making him jolt. He was held down as he struggled against the slow, steady tap-tap-tap of the needles sinking into his skin, dying his fingers from tips to knuckles a deep, mossy green. Blood and clear plasma leaked from his tortured skin along with the ink, mixing with his tears as he cried in helpless torment. The pain was excruciating-the needles spared nothing, sinking under his nails and into the tender webbing of his hands, burning like fire and searing through his arms and to his chest. His heart lept in his chest as though it wanted to break free, tense sweat soaking his back and face as the radiating agony overwhelmed him.

It lasted only hours. The hashish made time crawl to days. Alrumia lost track of how many times he drifted in an out of consciousness, the tap-tap-tap haunting him in his drugged dreams, his fingers feeling as though they were being held in a fire. It was only when the needle finally lifted away that he dared open his eyes, whimpering as the seated sage roughly massaged a cool oil into his weeping hands. He was too weak to sit up, shivering as he stared at his hands: the fingers were painted a permanent green in slim tendrils of vine, every inch of the plants etched into his hands drawn in meticulous detail. It would have been beautiful if it didn't hurt so much, if the vines weren't blooming in blood.

The pain would last for a few weeks as his hands scabbed and grew new skin, he was told. No one warned him how badly it would itch, though: the desperate need to scratch drove him half to madness at night and he was forced to wear thick, hot woollen mitts to protect his hands. He chewed at the drawstrings to get them off, and was whipped for it with a knotted rope that left him bruised black. He couldn't garden with his hands cracking and bleeding constantly-instead he spent his days chewing hashish for the pain and pouring over the only books available to him, great religious tomes that he couldn't possibly read.

The sage who had tattooed him would sit with him and read the stories to him, sometimes. Alrumia was enchanted by the tales, listening in fascination learning more about God than he'd ever heard about back in his small village. Tales of revenge and murder were balanced by promises of love and justice, a side of the Lord he had never known. Those nights, before he slept, he would pray for the love and kindness God had shown in the holy texts. He prayed until it hurt. His only answer was his healing hands, soon smooth and soft with new, green flesh.


End file.
